The Secret Formula: Cheese Sauces

Let me tell you a story:

Many years ago, I went to The Melting Pot for the first time for a celebration. I’d enjoyed chocolate fondues a number of times before this, and they were okay. A little off perhaps compared to chocolate alone, nothing crazy. But this was not the case, between 3 courses of excellent food. The cheese fondue was addictive. This is not an endorsement of The Melting Pot, I in no way benefit if you choose to go to one, I simply enjoy good food. Over time I found myself missing the cheesy goodness of that first course. As any good internet user I sought out imitation recipes online, and found some pretty good ones.

In all these recipes I found myself in a constant struggle to produce the perfect fondue, and many times fell victim to the curse that is curdled cheese. To be honest, as many times as I have made them since I would probably curdle it again today. With enough patience and spare cheese I was able to produce a decent consistency. The flavor was excellent, and I thought I had finally figured it out. Then I placed my leftovers in the fridge.

Upon reheating these fondues (as there is no way just one person can eat it all… well not all the time at least), I found that the sauce become curdled. More wasted cheese :(. Further attempts proved that slowly reheating in a pan with constant stirring allowed for a decent consistency to return, but never perfect. In fact, having since made what I have, even my best of those were never that great as far as consistency. There had to be something out there right? Clearly if a restaurant can reliably produce perfect fondue with as few steps and stirs as is done there, there must be a way for me to do the same at home. Right? After some time I began to think that perhaps I simply was not made to produce cheese sauces. This wouldn’t be the end of the world, and as such I decided to only make them sparingly and accept this. Until one day.

I was scrolling the endless pieces of clickbait and updates on social media, until I stumbled on a link to an article. An article about what you ask? An article about cheese sauces. That’s right.

In this article they described my pains up until this moment and all the wasted gourmet cheese and then I saw it. The solution to all my woes. Sodium Citrate.

Sodium Citrate acts as a powerful emulsifier binding cheese sauces in a way you would not believe. I thought this is too good to be true, some random salt is supposed to magically make my sauces work? But hey, it’s cheap enough, I figure worst case it lives in the back of the pantry until the end of days. So I buy.

Words cannot describe the miracle that is Sodium Citrate. Little bit of wine, 1 Tbsp. of Sodium Citrate, and a pound of cheese. If you include this salt in your searches you will find many recipes quite quickly, the trick is knowing you needed it in the first place ;). It worked so well in fact that I thought to myself, why limit myself to just fondue? What about queso dip? Well what do you know it works just as well. No need to worry about using creamy enough cheeses to start, as long as that salt was there and a little mixing and the perfect sauce. Mac and cheese sauce? No problem, just use milk instead of wine. Add cheese slowly? Why bother, when you have Sodium Citrate!

To save you some time I have included a link below to amazon in the event you may wish to try this yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=innovativet0d-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=4b4da7fc6b1debcf3965bf6f9ec67ede&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=grocery&keywords=Sodium Citrate”

Disclaimer: The above link is an affiliate link which I may earn income from your usage of.